Writing is writing whether done for duty, profit, or fun.

Posts tagged “Pura Belpré Award”

Once I gave a girl a copy of Pablo Neruda’s love poems. Call me the pretentious Latinx college student wanting to impress the girl.* Truth is, I never read the book. Never read anything by Neruda until a few years later when I purchased a copy of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda on a whim. Wasn’t too long until I discovered a poem that just resonated with me (and still does to this day). There’s a certain romanticism and magic realism that marks a Neruda poem, which Pam Muñoz Ryan captures in her juvenile novel, The Dreamer. Peppered with the illustrations of Peter Sís, the novel follows young Neftalí as he tries to find his place in the world. His imagination is fueled by…